Yes, journalists confuse (or confused) Twitter with what "the people" are thinking.
A prominent case: A few years ago, J.K. Rowling wrote an article on gender bathroom policy. I'm pretty sure most random people, when given the piece to read, would have judged it to be some rather moderate opinion. But on Twitter the author encounterd a massive wave of accusations and hostility. The journalists were probably sympathetic with those people, and moreover thought them to be in the majority among the general population (because the JKR criticisms were in the majority on Twitter).
So the journalists went out and wrote news pieces casually describing Rowling as being a transphobic, as if this was an uncontroversial description of fact, like the sky being blue, when it was really a serious accusation by the journalist. Their Twitter filter bubble confuses them about which views are common and which are fringe.
A prominent case: A few years ago, J.K. Rowling wrote an article on gender bathroom policy. I'm pretty sure most random people, when given the piece to read, would have judged it to be some rather moderate opinion. But on Twitter the author encounterd a massive wave of accusations and hostility. The journalists were probably sympathetic with those people, and moreover thought them to be in the majority among the general population (because the JKR criticisms were in the majority on Twitter).
So the journalists went out and wrote news pieces casually describing Rowling as being a transphobic, as if this was an uncontroversial description of fact, like the sky being blue, when it was really a serious accusation by the journalist. Their Twitter filter bubble confuses them about which views are common and which are fringe.